Lying around the southern end of Tule Lake is a region known as the "Lava Beds," a vast field of congealed lava intersected in every direction with a labyrinth of fissures and caves and abrupt walls of rock. The place is a natural fastness of such extraordinary defensive strength that a handful of resolute men could hold it against an army so long as provisions and ammunition held out. To this place the Indians fled, numbering, with those who afterwards joined them of fifty-three men with their families. And here took place during the next year the most remarkable defense of which the annals of Indian warfare afford any account, and the most unparalleled act of treachery, the murder of Gen. Canby and Dr. Thomas, and the attempted murder of Mr. Meacham and Mr. Dyer, who as commissioners had met the Indians under a flag of truce to negotiate a treaty of peace. The volume before us is a narrative of the events of this war and a sketch of the history of the tribe during the preceding quarter of a century. The author is the son of a Modoc mother and a white father. His father and mother acted as interpreters in the negotiations between the Indians and the peace commissioners, and had and deserved the confidence of the best informed on both sides. The mother was a woman of remarkable character, and is in fact the most heroic Indian figure of the Modoc war. With such an ancestry it is not surprising that the author should exhibit strong sympathy for the Indians. In fact, he avows, as a reason for his book that "the Indian side has never been given to the public yet." To the credit of his fairness it must be said that his account of actual occurrences is hardly more favorable to the Indians than that of others who witnessed and have written of them. If fault can be found anywhere it is in an occasional lack of details where details would lend a darker color to the facts given. The author modestly says of himself and his book: "I have one drawback, I have no education, but I have tried to write as plain as I could. I use no fine language in my writing, for I lack education." The book itself fully sustains this statement. But at times the very lack of art and skill betrayed lends a certain pathos to the story. The volume can hardly be called a valuable contribution to the history of the war. Its chief interest will be to the pioneer of the locality who will turn to it as he would to a newspaper of the time, or an old letter written from the midst of the scenes it describes, and thus live over again the scenes of this stirring period. JULIUS A. STRATTON. * * * * * TEN THOUSAND MILES WITH A DOG SLED. By Hudson Stuck, D. D., F. R. G. S., Archdeacon of the Yukon. (N. Y., Charles Scribner's Sons, 1914. $3.50.)